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Sunday, March 15, 2009

The healthcare community specializing in vitamins is putting forward a simple, easily tested idea. Vitamin deficiency is commonplace amongst children and the elderly, and is the cause of painful, chronic conditions. A simple cocktail of four vitamins – vitamin C, vitamin D, niacin, and thiamine – is the root cause of anorexia, bedsores, cavities, colds, dementia, depression, sleep disorders, and the slow healing of wounds caused by bacteria, viruses, and heavy metals. We are asking readers to focus special attention on cavities and gum disease. Cavities and gum disease are epidemic in our society. It is easy to test the assertion that people with poor dental health either have, or are at high risk for, anorexia, bed sores, colds, dementia, depression, sleep disorders, and slow-healing wounds. It is just as easy to test the idea that vitamin C, vitamin D, niacin, and thiamine prevent cavities and gum disease. Anyone who gets their teeth cleaned regularly has good dental records. They can review their records, start taking vitamins, and ask their dentist to look for improvements. The vitamins either prevent cavities and gum disease or they don’t. Improving dental health either decreases the prevalence of anorexia, bedsores, colds, dementia, depression, sleep disorders, and slow healing wounds or it doesn’t. The vitamin dose is important. Here it is:

1) 4000 mg of vitamin C, once per day (or in divided doses to eliminate side effects)2) Between 10 and 20 minutes of sunshine between 11 am and 1 pm every day that the sun shines. At least once a month lie under the sun between 11 am and 1 pm for between 10 and 20 minutes in shorts or a bikini (half the time on each side)3) One 250 mg time-release tablet of niacin per week4) One, 100 mg tablet of thiamine per day. One 50 mg enteric-coated tablet of TTFD (fat soluble thiamine), once per week. Alternatively, TTFD powder can be rubbed into the skin with water. It is also available as a skin cream.

These four vitamins are special because they prevent scurvy, rickets, pellegra, and beriberi. Read more here, and here.

As the quality of the affordable food supply to working class Americans declines, and the exposure to air pollution, viruses, and heavy metals increases, and more people spend more time indoors and/or use sun block outdoors, more and more Americans are becoming vitamin deficient. Mainstream medicine is responding with drugs that treat the symptoms, enabling patients to manage suffering while carrying on with their lives. Well over half the American population is now on at least one prescription drug for a chronic condition. The average age of patients starting prescription drugs for chronic conditions is dropping with time. By this measure, the health of the average American has been steadily declining for decades despite the country’s enormous investment in healthcare technology.

To read more about vitamins and cavities, click here. To read more about anorexia, click here. To read more about dementia click here.

Sleep disorders are a surprisingly common problem. Pharmaceutical companies have come up with powerful drugs that induce sleep, but they don’t induce healthy, refreshing sleep. I don’t know anyone who really likes to be on sleeping pills. Bed manufacturers and surgeons want people to believe that poor sleep is a physical problem. There’s nothing wrong with you, you just need a better bed or an operation. It is difficult to sift through all the advertising and reach the consensus scientific understanding that poor sleep is typically a problem with the nervous system. Your brain is supposed to control the oscillation between sleeping and waking. Unusual noises at night are supposed to wake you up. So when you first move from the country to the city, you are supposed to have trouble sleeping until your subconscious is reprogrammed to stop traffic noise from waking you up. So go ahead, learn to sleep on your side, have surgery, and buy a new bed. It is useful to compensate for declining brain function when there is no other way. But physical changes like this don’t address the root cause of typical sleep disorders – a problem with the nervous system. And don’t assume the problem is genetic, or an inevitable part of getting older. The problem is often a simple vitamin deficiency, easily fixed with the simple vitamin program we recommend. Read more here.

We tend to think about wounds narrowly. A wound is the result of physical injury – a burn, a cut, a bruise, or a scrape. Chemical burns are generally recognized as causing similar wounds. Viruses, bacteria, air pollution, and heavy metals also cause wounds. Since these wounds are invisible, and often spread across a large area of the body, they are not typically thought of as wounds. They are, however microscopic or invisible, wounds. Slow healing wounds cause lingering colds, infections, and unhealed bruises. A wound is a crisis situation for the body. Very high doses of vitamin C and niacin have proven wound-healing properties and are an appropriate supplemental treatment to drugs and surgeries. Vitamin C and niacin are available as topical creams enabling targeted local delivery of very high doses. In extreme situations, vitamin C and niacin can be injected at the wound site. Read more here.

Bedsores are a particularly tragic wound. Along with anorexia, the scientific case for vitamin deficiency is especially strong. Read more here. Patients in poor health in hospitals and nursing homes are kept inside, and out of the sun and are certain to see vitamin D levels drop. Read more here. Confined to bed, the need for calories drops, resulting in reduced food and therefore vitamin intake. Without supplements and sunshine, nursing home and hospital care is a prescription for vitamin deficiency.

When challenged by wounds caused by bacteria, viruses, pollution, or heavy metals, the best results are achieved by using the methods of mainstream medicine together with the vitamins we recommend. Extra vitamin C and niacin are recommended when antibiotics are needed. The antibiotics kill the bacteria. The vitamins speed healing of the wounds caused by the bacteria. Read more here.

Put our idea that vitamin deficiency is commonplace to the test. Get vitamin C, vitamin D, niacin, and thiamine in the doses we recommend. Urge the children and elderly members of your family in your care to do likewise. Work with your dentists to monitor your dental health. Watch with us to see if the trend of ever-higher numbers of Americans starting chronic prescription drug use earlier and earlier in life can be reversed.

2 Comments:

Thanks for the continued correspondence on your "Overdosing on Vitamin D" post. It's been beneficial to me, and I trust it will be beneficial to any others who are searching for answers to similar questions.

Moving on to the present post, in our recent correspondence, you said:

"Are you considering taking extra vitamin C, niacin, and thiamine? Will TTFD (fat soluble thiamine) ever go mainstream in the supplement world after remaining in obscurity for decades?"

I do take extra vitamin C and B3, though I do not presently take TTFD. I'm aware that Ecological Formulas has a TTFD supplement that is fairly inexpensive, so I'm considering that. TTFD is obscure. Benfotiamine,also a fat-soluble B1, seems to be much more common, though I'm unaware of its comparative effectiveness.

I think there seems to be a strong connection between cavities and hypercoagulation. And if this is the case, it would only make sense that these nutrients would provide enormous benefit by that merit alone, as they are all connected, by one way or another, to the cardiovascular system. One more piece to this puzzle that might be something to consider is the role of vitamin K2. I find the observations of Weston A. Price to be compelling, and in this case, his observations about what he called "Activator X" (what we now know as vitamin K2) are of prime importance for dental health. I'm seen it again and again. A return to normal levels of K2 consumption (through diet if possible, but supplements also exist) works wonders for the teeth (among many other things, including the heart).